Dzhokhar wins some, loses some in fed suit
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should not be allowed to dip into his growing canteen account — now $2,300 — while awaiting a decision on his execution, a federal judge has ruled.
He also won’t get back his white baseball cap and bandana he bought “to ward off the summer heat” in his Colorado supermax prison, the court added.
It’s the latest developments in the Boston Marathon bomber’s legal fight with his jailers.
Tsarnaev is suing the federal government for $250,000 over what he says in a hand-written lawsuit is “disturbing” and “unprofessional” treatment inside the Federal Correctional Complex Florence — called the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
Colorado federal Magistrate Judge Gordon Gallagher wrote in his decision that Tsarnaev was given leeway because he is representing himself, but some of his arguments “are deficient.”
The judge added that while in prison, “not all deprivations of property are of constitutional magnitude.”
Tsarnaev is not allowed to dip into his prison “trust fund” because some who donated to it are not allowed to under his special administrative measure — called a SAM. That account is $2,300, records state. It is not stated who has helped build it up.
The judge also writes Tsarnaev can appeal to his jailers to possibly win back his hat and bandana.
Tsarnaev is, however, allowed to proceed with five other counts in his sevencount, hand-written complaint. The judge advises another jurist can now address those concerns that include a ban on photos being sent in the mail from the prison and “hobby crafts” Tsarnaev works on while in the supermax.
He is also complaining about not being allowed to talk on the telephone with “young nieces and nephews” — and he wants out of his ultra-strict H-unit cell.
This all comes months after the Supreme Court announced the Trump administration’s appeal to reinstate the death sentence for Tsarnaev will be heard.
The hearing is set for the fall.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit threw out Tsarnaev’s death sentences last year, ruling the district court should have asked potential jurors what media coverage they had seen about Tsarnaev’s case and the court should not have excluded from the sentencing phase evidence that Tsarnaev’s older brother, who placed one of the bombs, was involved in a separate triple murder in Waltham in 2011.
The Tsarnaev brothers killed Martin Richard, 8; Krystle Campbell, 29; and Lu Lingzi, 23, and maimed and injured more than 260 people with two bombs detonated on April 15, 2013, at the marathon finish line. MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, 27, was shot execution-style by the Tsarnaevs days later. Boston Sgt. Dennis “DJ” Simmonds died a year later from his wounds fighting the brothers.